Friday, October 7, 2011

What I would like to ascertain is how it is not wrong for someone to compare the President of the United States to the worst mass murderer in history. There is a lot of talk in the Domain of Evil (AKA the news media) focusing on the verbiage used by the rich and famous when being interviewed. I am of two opinions on this topic:

1. If you are a person of note, particularly one who has been interviewed before, then you should have enough sense to say something interesting and not leave the minions of the Domain of Evil with the opportunity to ruin your career because you spoke what you thought instead of what was politically correct.

2. If you are too drunk or dimwitted to realize when you are about to hit a metaphorical brick wall where it comes to your career, then you get what you deserve.Now this piece is driven by a recent statement by a famous country and western singer, one whose music I admire greatly, who managed to stammer himself into the rather precarious position of finding a way to express regret over some words spouted in an interview about our current serving president.

Well the Constitution guarantees us the right to speak in any fashion we elect. It is a most perilous lake in which to swim. Gone are the days when idiosyncratic rhetoric was dismissed as a by-product of pure unabashed rugged individualism. Today that don’t-care-you-can–kiss-my-ass attitude has been replaced with the oh-shit-I-just-put-my-foot-in-my-mouth-again school of celebrity. I’ve always like the rugged individualists that peppered our population of the celebrated. Iggy Pop always spoke to my soul at some level. Woody Guthrie’s was a giant of a hero, and the ultimate rascal where it comes to alternative viewpoints, Frank Zappa, was correct when he admonished us not to eat the Yellow Snow.

I live what some may consider a rather subdued life. I no longer charge up mountains chasing real or imagined social injustices in order to bludgeon them into submission. I restrict myself to launching vulgarity at the television or the computer screen and taking it out on my faithful readers (oh by the way, I haven’t read too many, or any, comments on the blog for a long time?). The closest I have come to the pseudo-radical I once was (I did join the military when everyone else marched on Washington to protest the Vietnam War) is standing on the courthouse square one frigid winter morning a few years ago to protest the War in Iraq. As I recall, my hip began to hurt and I retreated to the comfort of IHOP with a lady carrying a poster that decried the intelligence of the then serving president. We had spent about an hour in the cold, and the ensuing relationship lasted only until I shared about having once voted for a Republican. Love is most assuredly as fickle as its reputation suggests.

What irks me specifically about this situation is the response I have read in the social networking world I participate in. This situation has been everywhere in the Cyber Cosmos. There is some feeling where it comes to these mediums that it is a necessity to spread ignorance and intolerance. I usually defriend those who hold political beliefs I find repugnant, after politely asking them to cease. Well, I had occasion to have to do this with a friend of mine a while back. This gentleman is a good guy who feels it is his duty to spread a political agenda of ignorance and loathing most similar to that held by the Republican Party. I make no apology to anyone for my insolence and regrettable intolerance. They are wrong and I am right (oh! no! say it isn’t so!). This fellow has a cabal of Facebookers who adhere to his dogma and I have also de-friended them, one after I corrected for grammar a post decrying me as an “Ignorant Twit.”

Well this is America, and this “Ignorant Twit” has the right to believe my foes to also be unschooled while I get to stand tall as the erudite idiot I am. That is the beauty of the rights we enjoy.

What give me pause is that those inalienable rights do not seem to hold the same panache as in times gone by. Today our once beloved flamboyance has been imprisoned by clumsiness when we speak. The élan of former days has surrendered to the awkwardness of attempting to second guess the microphone in front of you. What a shame.

I did not like what my “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” friend had to say, but he should not catch trouble for it. You shouldn’t have apologized Hank. You should not have had to. You may be wrong, but you have the right to be wrong. God knows I am much of the time.Peace